Dan

Re "Schnur makes his pitch," Column, Feb. 3 If Dan Schnur gets elected secretary of state as an independent, it might be the most consequential political earthquake in California since Gov. Hiram Johnson in 1911 gave us the three pillars of direct democracy: initiative, recall and referendum. Howard P. Cohen North Hills ALSO: Letters: Snepp vs. Snowden Letters: Do something on water. Now. Letters: The price of playing pro sports

Tens of thousands of tons of coal ash have spilled into the Dan River from a closed North Carolina coal plant since Sunday, but drinking water supplies have not been affected, according to municipal officials and the plant's owner, Duke Energy. Between 50,000 and 82,000 tons of ash have poured into the Dan River, which flows between North Carolina and Virginia, Duke Energy said. Corporate officials, who blamed a broken storm water pipe, said Tuesday that the utility was still working to stop the leak at the Dan River Steam Station in Eden, N.C. About 24 to 27 million gallons of basin water from a 27-acre coal ash reservoir at the retired plant also spilled into the river, Duke Energy said in a statement.

SACRAMENTO - Dan Schnur may represent a new trend and the embodiment of California political reform. Then again, he may be just another wannabe officeholder living in fantasy land. Schnur, 50, a former Republican strategist and spokesman - hack and flack - is running for California secretary of state, or chief elections officer. What makes this noteworthy is that Schnur - most recently a reformer and educator - is trying to become the first nonpartisan to win a partisan statewide office.

After joining the L.A. hard-core band Black Flag, Henry Rollins became one of the most intense frontmen in rock. Yet even he had to take a back seat to the hold that Cool "Disco" Dan held over his hometown of Washington, D.C., in the '80s. A kind of people's regional superhero, the graffiti artist Cool "Disco" Dan left his distinct tag all over the city while a new strain of funk music, go-go, became the backbeat of African American D.C. Rollins narrates "The Legend of Cool 'Disco' Dan," a documentary on the artist and the era (now available on DVD and streaming at cooldiscodan.com )

Sportscaster Dan Patrick found his popular morning radio and television show caught in the middle of a feud between DirecTV and the Weather Channel. Patrick's show had booked Weather Channel star Jim Cantore to appear on the show this week to talk about the forecast for Sunday's Super Bowl, which is being played in northern New Jersey. But that apparently didn't sit too well with DirecTV, which owns Patrick's show and carries it on its own Audience Network Channel. DirecTV stopped carrying the Weather Channel earlier this month because of a contract dispute and the two have been trading blows in the press.

Homer, whose epic poems rank with King David's psalms among the longest-running items in heavy rotation on Western civilization's hit parade, keeps making news 2,600-plus years after his initial fame. First up is word that actor Dan Stevens recently has immersed himself in the ancient Greek bard since leaving "Downton Abbey" after his character, heir-to-the-manor Matthew Crawley, had a fatal car wreck in a 2013 episode of the PBS series. It was no tragedy for Stevens, who pretty much forced that plot turn by declaring he was leaving the show.

SACRAMENTO -- USC politics professor and former Republican strategist Dan Schnur announced Friday that he will run for California secretary of state on a platform of proposals that includes banning lawmakers from campaign fund-raising while the Legislature is in session. A former spokesman to Republicans including Gov. Pete Wilson and 2000 presidential candidate John McCain, Schnur dropped his Republican Party affiliation in 2011 and plans to run as a "no party preference" candidate.

Dan Kelley, who helped turn Arleta into a competitive City Section Division I program, has resigned to become the coach at Santa Clarita Golden Valley. The lack of teaching jobs in LAUSD caused Kelley to move to Golden Valley, a program that has struggled in the competitive Foothill League. Eric.sondheimer@latimes.com

The fifth season of "Community" begins Thursday on NBC, with the return of creator and show runner Dan Harmon, absent from his own show - he was fired - in Season 4. Writer-producer Chris McKenna has also returned; the pair shares credit for the opening episode, "Repilot," which will be immediately followed by a second episode, "Introduction to Teaching. " Indeed, there may have been some thought in the upper reaches of NBC that the series could be tweaked to attract viewers who might have found forbidding its barbed mesh of meta-humor, pop-cultural references, parody and reality shifts.

SACRAMENTO -- Dan Schnur, a former GOP political strategist who went on to head the Fair Political Practices Commission and take a teaching post at USC, is preparing for another possible career move: candidate for California secretary of state. FOR THE RECORD: The headline on an earlier version of this article incorrectly said Schnur is a Republican; he dropped his Republican Party affiliation in 2011. Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, said he would probably run for the state's top elections post as an independent candidate.